Citation

Lah S, Black C, Gascoigne M, Gott C, Epps A, Parry L. J. Neurotrauma 2017; 34(17): 2536-2544.

Affiliation

Sydney Children's Hospital Randwick, Brain Injury Rehabilitation Department, Sydney, United States ; louise.parry@sesiahs.health.nsw.gov.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/neu.2016.4872

PMID

28482744

Abstract

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) is characterised by adequate recall after short, but not long delays. ALF is not detected by standardised neuropsychological memory tests. Currently, the prevailing conceptualisation of ALF is of a temporal-lobe seizure related phenomenon. Nevertheless, Mayes and colleagues (2003) proposed that ALF may arise when any of the components of the brain network involved in long-term memory formation, or their interaction is disrupted. This disruption does not have to be caused by temporal lobe seizures for ALF to occur. Here we investigate this possibility in a group of school aged children who have sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI; n=28), which often results in disruption of the brain network that is important for long-term memory formation and recall. Healthy control children (n=62) also participated. Contrary to the dominant conceptualisation of ALF being a seizure related phenomenon, children with TBI showed ALF. Sustaining a severe TBI and diffuse subcortical damage was related to ALF. Individually, 8 of the 13 children with severe TBI presented with ALF. : a greater than expected decline in recall after a long, relative to a short, delay. ALF would remain undetected on standardised testing in 6 of these 8 children. One child had the opposite pattern of dissociation, an impaired score on standardised testing, but an average long-term memory score. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to show ALF in patients with TBI, which has remained undiagnosed and untreated in this patient population. Our study also challenges the dominant hypothesis of ALF being a temporal-lobe seizure related phenomenon and raises a possibility that short-term and long-term memory systems may be independent.

Language: en

Keywords

LEARNING AND MEMORY; NEUROPSYCHOLOGY; PEDIATRIC BRAIN INJURY